storyteLLIng desIgn 171 171 S p r i n g , 2 0 0 7 It is already far past midnight as Anab Jain watches the latest video footage she shot during the day . . . S p r i n g , 2 0 0 7 It is already far past midnight as Anab Jain watches the latest video footage she shot during the day . . . . . . She’s working on a series of small fi lms for Colebrook Bosson Saunders, a designer and manufacturer of award-winning oΩice furniture accessories. Anab is a storyteller and designer, and the fi lms she is working on are part of a project to help Colebrook Bosson Saunders make sense of how the future of work and the work- place could look. To make this future tangible, she invented three protagonists and projected them into 2012. She gave them new jobs based on research into new and emerging technologies and the impact of demographics and environmental risks on our future lives. The fi lms then show this near future. But rather than describing 2012, Anab takes the role of the storyteller, visiting this future environment and interviewing the three protagonists. They each explain their work and show objects they use. The fi lms are real enough to cause viewers to suspend their disbelief and become intrigued by the diΩerent environment. That is exactly what companies that hire Anab Jain, like Microsoft and Nokia, are looking for: stories to make potential futures tangible. bmgen_final.indd 171 6/15/10 5:43 PM